Sundance (State Dinner 5)
by Alexandra926
Summary: AU - Mark's been back on Earth for two years now, when he suddenly vanishes without a trace. His crew, his friends, and the rest of humanity band together to #BringHimHome.
1. Prologue

It was moving day, but Mark was nowhere to be found, when Sophia stopped by on Monday morning. It was strange that he hadn't answered his phone, or buzzed her through, downstairs. Now he wasn't answering the door.

She felt an unmistakable dread, uncurling slowly in her gut, as she opened the unlocked door and surveyed Mark's empty apartment.

An overturned chair blocked the path towards the small kitchen.

Her heart was pounding, she was a river of adrenaline flowing unchecked. "Oh my God," she whispered. Her hands were shaking as she pulled out her phone and dropped it, clattering, to the floor.

She dialed the White House, as she walked towards the bedroom, fairly quivering with fear. The room was empty, the bed still made. He'd never packed. Mark's computer was missing. The paint on one wall was blistered and slightly darkened, in an odd aurora. There was a slightly acrid smell. What in the hell had happened here?

"Good morning, the White House," a friendly voice answered.

"This is Sophia Roberts," she whispered shakily. "This is an emergency. Put my father on the line."

"Voiceprint?"

She choked out the emergency password, as she heard the computerized line coupler transfer click.

"Sophia?" President Roberts answered.

"Mark's been taken." Her legs were trembling, as she tried to stay calm and collect her thoughts. The line coupler was transferred multiple times, click, click, click, as the wheels began to turn in her mind.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Situation Room**

"Until we've received a ransom, or some faction makes an announcement, we've got to keep trying to narrow things down. Sophia, do you remember anything else, anything strange or unusual, over the last several days?"

Sophia felt numb. She'd been over and over the last few days in her mind; there was nothing.

"No. If I think of anything new, I'll say so." She closed her eyes, trying not to think of what was happening to Mark right now. One of the recently updated reports from the crime scene had found a fresh bloodstain along the inside of a door. Whoever had taken Mark had had no qualms about hurting him. _Don't think about it_. She sobbed quietly, as her mother hugged her around the shoulders. _Don't think about it_. Her father had taken her hand in his. _He could be dead already_.

"Right, feel free to interrupt if anything comes to mind, then. We don't have anyone who was in contact with Watney after 9:30 last night. Sophia was the last person to speak with him; he said he'd be packing. There are unassembled packing boxes in the living room." Lloyd Mitchell gestured to Ava Collins. "Give us a run-down of all the recent domestic threats against Watney."

"It's a long list," she replied, "but there's nothing particularly alarming here. Just the same crazies we've been monitoring for the last two years. Religious zealots that think Watney is the Anti-Christ. The anti-Watney faction that thinks he should be deported back to Mars; the militia group that's named him a traitor to humanity; there's a half-dozen more."

"And you don't think any of those threats," President Roberts motioned to the file she held, "logically explain Mark's abduction."

"None that have recently amplified, or made public statements. None of them seem particularly well-funded."

"International terrorism, then." Mitchell gestured to Collins again.

"Again, nothing huge on our radar. The usual radicalized militants that think President Roberts is not representing their interests in his weekly diplomatic digest that he sends out to the alien planet."

"Have we considered whether Oaiea might have returned, somehow, and taken him?"

Sophia spoke up, "No." she said bluntly. "Mark had a message from her just last week. The time-drag was normal. If she turned her ship around, it would take two years for her to return."

"Longer, I think." Collins added. "Anyway, her ship has been, as you know, widely followed by astronomy buffs over the last two years. Any slow-down or course-change of her ship would have been widely noted, long before now."

"New reports," Mitchell announced, as he started scanning over documents on a tablet. "Apparently, Oaiea's ship _has_ changed course, and appears to be heading back to Earth. As of twenty five minutes ago."

Silence descended on the room.

Collins was the first to speak, as though thinking out loud, "So if Oaiea has just stopped, and turned around to come back..."

"He must have gotten off a message to her, using his communicator? Before they dragged him out of the apartment last night? Or after?" Mitchell finished her thought.

"How long will it take for her to get here?" President Roberts asked.

"Two years, plus eighty days, give or take." Mitchell looked at the report again. "This doesn't make any sense."

"Does she have any other way of talking to Earth, other than through Mark?" Collins looked at President Roberts, "Could she send _you_ a message?" He gestured to President Robert's small, square crystalline tablet device.

"Not as far as I know," Perry replied. "That crewmate of Watney's, Johanssen; She did some sort of study of the transmission signal, last year."

Mitchell shook his head in disbelief. "Mr. President, this is the first I've heard of any of this."

"Well, naturally. It's a classified project. Johanssen wasn't trying to replicate the signal, so that she could send out her own. She was making an attempt to capture and compile a signal from Mark's device and one from mine, so that she could compare them."

"That sounds like a pretty fine line, sir. And what was her conclusion?"

"That it couldn't be done. That they operate on mutually exclusive systems." Perry shrugged. "I don't see what help Oaiea can be to us right now, anyway. She's two years away."

"She can track his communicator," Sophia pointed out. "If we can talk to her, she can tell us where it is. Or where it was." She trailed off, and closed her eyes again. She tried not to think about her husband, injured, in the hands of people who... _don't think about it_.

"New data," announced Mitchell again, as a new report downloaded. "Cell phone triangulation shows that Mark was at his apartment at 9:30. At 9:39, he's on the move, less than a kilometer to the east. At 10:14 the signal fades out, getting farther away from the cell towers but not appearing to go anywhere. Then it's just gone. And no pings since then."

"We need to get NASA involved." Collins stated evenly, "If anyone can figure out how to contact Oaiea, it's Johanssen, and right now she works for them. Bring her in. Bring in Kapoor, as well."

 **Day 2**

It was early morning, and Sophia sat, dead-eyed, in the oval reception room where she'd once laughed with Oaiea and Mark. Fighting back a wave of nausea, she remembered Oaiea in her silver gown, and Mark... _don't think about it._ The paneled door opened; it was Marissa.

For once, Marissa didn't say a word. She put her arms around Sophia and hugged her tightly, for what seemed like hours.

Finally, Sophia said, dully, "We knew it was dangerous."

"What was dangerous?" Marissa tried to make eye-contact with Sophia, who stared steadily at the wall.

"Trying to force people into acceptance. Giving people no choice. We orchestrated the whole thing, so carefully. We knew it was dangerous."

"It was brave." Marissa replied, loyally. "It was the right thing to do."

"It was dangerous." Sophia closed her eyes. "It was dangerous, and it was stupid. And now we're going to pay for it. Mark is..." she trailed off, unable to continue. A tear escaped her closed eyes.

"Mark is a survivor." Marissa was trying not to cry, herself. "He's a survivor. Whatever the world throws at him, he keeps on being his smartass self. And he wouldn't like to hear you talking like this."

Sophia had no answer.


	3. Chapter 3

What the hell, Mark thought, as he found himself unable to open his eyes. Finally, some ten anxious seconds later, he was able to wrench them open, at least a little bit. Wherever he was, it was pitch dark. He groaned, as he realized the extent of deep shit he was in. He felt like he'd taken a beating. Oh wait, he had. A vague memory of his foot being shattered against a door jamb fluttered to the surface of his overwhelmed mind.

His ankle throbbed painfully. It was itchy with dried blood. Was it broken? If it was, it sure felt weird. Like it was frozen. Like his feet were made of ice. There was an all-over weird feeling about this. A familiar, weird feeling.

Out of sheer force of habit, he squeezed his left hand into a fist, and was utterly shocked to discover that the round computer Oaiea had given him hadn't been taken. His hands were not working properly, either. They had that iced-over feeling as well.

"Worst. kidnappers. ever." An attempt to roll his eyes was a fail, as his eye muscles refused to cooperate; instead they strained uselessly against the darkness, finding nothing to focus on. Okay, nothing to look at, he told himself. Listen, instead.

He slowed his breathing, deliberately, and focused intensely on seeing if he could hear anything. It wasn't exactly quiet, but he couldn't pin down what the sound was, or where it was coming from. A deep, thrumming noise, like ocean waves. All around him, but there was a floor beneath him, where it seemed louder. The... ceiling? seemed quieter.

A suspicion was beginning to grow, though he could hardly believe it. No. Not possible. Are you fucking kidding me, he thought.

There was no other explanation. He was in space.

His stomach churned painfully. How long had he been out? Hours? Days? Years? He'd been knocked out, but had they put him some sort of cryogenic stasis?

The icy feeling in his hands and feet would tend to argue that they had. It seemed to be receding, slowly.

The dried blood on his ankle might be an indicator that he hadn't been out for very long, though.

Wait a minute.

He flexed his back, experimentally, to see if anything in particular was anchoring him to the floor. It didn't seem like it. There was gravity here, at least equal to that on the Hermes.

No wonder those fuckers were so strong; the thought came to him, unbidden. Oaiea had been helpless for a couple of days when she was exposed to the high gravity of earth after her usual environment of zero-G. Not these guys. They'd easily overpowered him.

How had they found him, anyway? Wasn't Oaiea supposed to be the only one of her race in this corner of outer space? And how the hell had they even known he existed? Time-drag being what it was, he hadn't thought he'd ever come face to face with another Traveler. Let alone three of them. Had she lied to him?

Not Travelers, he corrected himself. He didn't know very many specifics about Oaiea's people, but among the things he did know was that Travelers travelled in pairs, with the one notable exception.

His hands were unlocking, slowly. The icy feeling had drifted back past his carpal bones now. He could get to his computer, awkwardly; he managed to activate it with the heel of his right hand. There were unread messages from Oaiea. And, he blinked, the menu had changed. A lot. How the hell had _that_ happened?

Oh. His computer had sensed that it was aboard a new ship, and had taken the opportunity to update. Not much doubt then, that they knew he had it. There was the name of the ship, written in Oaiea's language, which he and Johanssen had nicknamed Loop. The first character was a triple concentric circle, with an overlaid triangle, one angle of which was darkened. A noun. The next two characters were a verb. The last was a modifier; a color, probably. He awkwardly captured the four characters and dragged them over to the translation app that he and Oaiea had collaborated on.

Storm. To Break. Grey. Weird name for a ship, but whatever. His fingers were unlocking now. Three messages from Oaiea. There was something a little off, here, also. The menu looked different, and so did the Loop part of the message header.

 _Mark. We have a problem._ Sunday night, right after he'd been jumped. We have a problem. No shit, Oaiea, he thought angrily. The next message was also Sunday night.

 _Mark. Don't try to talk to them. Try to get away._ Ya think? The next message-he blinked-was from today. It was Friday morning on Earth now, and she'd sent this... six minutes ago?

 _I've sent Stargazer back to Earth. Mark, respond._ Why would she do that? And why did she say it that way, as though she weren't onboard.

The triple concentric circle stood out, in the header, as he realized, belatedly, that she had sent it from _this_ ship.

What in the hell was going on? He tried to tap out a message, with numb fingertips, gave up in frustration and switched to voice input.

 _Oaiea, I just woke up. They froze me or something._

He flinched a bit, when the computer chimed again, right away. It had been so long since she'd been able to answer him in real-time.

 _Mark. Tell me your status._ I'm a fucking hostage, he thought. Status is really shitty, thanks for asking. He sighed.

 _Ankle injury. Not sure yet how bad. Effects from the freeze thing are fading. Locked in a dark room. What about you._

 _Crush injury to hand. Confined to quarters._ She was a hostage, too, then. What in the _hell_ was going on, here.

 _Oaiea. Who are these guys? Why did you send your ship back to Earth?_ He could almost imagine her stony look when she received these very direct questions, but she'd better fucking answer them, because he had a shitload more of them for her. What the hell had she gotten him mixed up in?

 _Mark. I am sorry. There is much that you do not know about my people. This is by design; I did not wish your life, and those of your people, to be in danger._

 _Well_ , he replied angrily, _now it is_ _. Stop deflecting and start answering. Who are they, and how did they know where to find me? What do they want with me?_ The frozen effect had worn off pretty much entirely now, and his ankle was indeed, broken. Shit. Where was Beck when you needed him? He sat up, gingerly. He took off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt to get to his undershirt. It would have to do. He waited impatiently for Oaiea to answer, getting more annoyed by the minute when she didn't.

Using the light from his computer as a sort of flashlight, he worried a hole in his shirt using his teeth, and tore a long strip out of it. The actual wound was long closed, and the ankle was not as swollen as he had expected. Taking his shoe off hurt like hell, but five days of being frozen had probably stabilized the break somewhat. He finished wrapping it, in a figure eight, and tied it off. He'd used his socks as padding, and wrapped it as tight as he dared. It helped, considerably. No way would he be able to walk on it, though.

Suddenly he was exhausted. He folded the jacket up in quarters and put it behind his head. The faint smell of the leather reminded him of home, and Sophia. God. Sophia. He'd made her a wife and now she'd be a widow, if he couldn't figure out how to get home to her.

Fuck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Day 8**

"It's not possible." Beth repeated, firm in the knowledge that she was correct, as much as she wished she were wrong.

"Talk me through it again," Venkat prodded, "Maybe it's not as hopeless as that. I mean, _they_ managed to build one, we know it's _theoretically_ possible. What elements are we missing?"

"All of them," she replied bluntly. "I helped Mark to refine his communicator menus; he wanted them to voice-activate and auto-translate things. That took some doing, but we managed it, eventually. I can not build something, from scratch, to duplicate technology that I don't understand. And even if I did understand how it worked, even if I did have the means to build another one, even if I had a _blueprint_ of the thing, it would still be impossible to use it to send out a message to Oaiea.

"Why?"

"Because I wouldn't be able to _key_ it to anyone that the system would recognize. I don't know how Mark's communicator recognized _him_ , but I can assure you that it sure as hell refused to recognize _me_." She shrugged. "And since we have neither Mark nor his communicator..." she trailed off, silent for a moment. "Even if we did. Even if I were able to stop by Alien Radio Shack this afternoon or clone myself another one, magically." She rolled her eyes. "I still wouldn't be able to contact Oaiea with it; because a newly-built communicator wouldn't know who she was. Or where to find her. And I wouldn't have any way to supply it with that information."

Venkat frowned. "And what about the President's passport tablet device, here? Could this be hacked? Could you turn it into a communicator?"

She sighed, and shook her head. "No. It's a completely different piece of technology. It exists for two reasons-to send messages to the bigwigs back home to tell them what's going on; and, presumably, if we were close enough, to receive some sort of digest version of their digital newspaper. It doesn't have the capacity for anything else."

"It doesn't send the same sort of signal." Venkat said it like a statement, but his eyebrows were quirked into a question.

"This thing is a Speak & Spell from 1980, and a communicator is your modern cellphone." She passed the tablet from one hand to the other. "If you want a metaphor for how different they are."

Venkat was silent, as he contemplated that.

* * *

 **The Oval Office**

"The consensus was, that we would wait for any ransom communications, before we made any further public announcements. For Watney's safety. But it's been a week," Collins argued, "and it's becoming more and more apparent that he was, in fact, taken by extraterrestrials."

"Well?" President Roberts looked at Mitchell. "Are we in agreement on that then? No other explanation makes sense?"

Mitchell nodded. "It adds up. First, there's the cellphone triangulation. The way it faded out. Then, you've got the paint anomaly. Paint doesn't just crystalize and crackle like that for no reason. Forensics haven't been able to duplicate the effect. Finally, you've got that USGS data, so similar to the data for the other two known extraterrestrial landings. Right where he disappeared."

He paused for a moment, thinking. "It's been established that Oaiea's ship is capable of doing a stealthed landing; other than the minor tremor that we didn't catch until later, nobody heard or saw a thing that first time, either. From there, it's not too far a leap to assume that any ship from her planet could do the same. No reason _not_ to assume that they have suits that could do the same thing, enabling them to get to Watney undetected."

President Roberts nodded, gravely.

"So we just call off the search, then?" Collins asked. "That feels disloyal to Watney, doesn't it?" She looked at President Roberts keenly. This was his son-in-law, after all.

"Mark wouldn't want us spinning our wheels. I'm not sure what exactly we _should_ be doing to find him, but wasting man-hours searching for him here won't help anything. Call it off." He spoke decisively, but in reality he was unsure. What if they were wrong?

Collins nodded, uncomfortably. "Public statement?"

"Not yet," he closed his eyes. "I don't think we should say anything else yet. Is there any compelling reason that we should?"

"Other than the fact that more than a dozen people _do_ know, and eventually word is _going_ to get out." Mitchell frowned, "But it doesn't have to be today, no." He pushed back his chair.

"What are we supposed to _do_ with this," Collins wondered out loud, standing up. "If they've got him, and he's unable to communicate with us, the odds can't be very good that he'll be coming back alive, can they?"

"I'd say it's fairly likely that we'll never know what happened to Watney," Mitchell opined, "other than he's probably not going to be coming back this time."

The other two people in the room didn't like hearing him say it, but they couldn't disagree.

* * *

 **NASA**

"I can _not_ believe that we are having this conversation again. Teddy. Think this through. It's been over a week. Martinez needs to know. Ares 4 needs to know."

"You want to call Ares 4 up and tell the commander that his best friend was, to the best of our knowledge, abducted by aliens?"

"They need to know." Mitch looked at him steadily.

Teddy was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, "You're right. We need to tell them." He had a look of dread on his face.

"Right away." Mitch stood up, nodding his thanks to Teddy.

"Warn them," Teddy said. "You need to warn them that they might be next."


	5. Chapter 5

**Day 14**

Oh, god. His stomach lurched as the gravity fell away again. Nausea surged up as he became weightless, and he quickly pulled his shirt up to his mouth. Vomiting in zero-G was a very bad idea. He took deep breaths, willing himself not to throw up. He'd once thought Oaiea's space sludge was the worst thing he'd ever tasted, but he'd kill for some of it now. The reddish-hued version on _this_ ship was beyond vile. His entire digestive system was in open revolt, at this point. The less said about that, the better.

He'd mentally dubbed the ship Stormbreaker, since the actual translated name made no sense; he figured it was close enough. Of course, he'd only seen this one small square of it, but overall, he was not impressed with his new home. He made a mental note to lodge a complaint with Airbnb.

Oaiea had never responded to him, and he was feeling too angry and stubborn to try again to talk with her. Let her have a taste of the silent treatment she'd once given him. Fuck her. He'd decided to ignore her for the time being, and settled into a sort of schedule, to try to keep himself occupied. Once he'd figured out that he could access a menu on his computer that controlled the lighting and temperature in his room (cell?) the claustrophobia had abated somewhat. It still fucking sucked.

About every fifteen hours, they turned off the centripetal gravity for awhile. Ten minutes or so. He didn't know why. They'd hardly ever turned theirs off on the Hermes. It was a pain in the ass, though, because it made him sick every. fucking. time. His esophagus was beginning to relax now, as he continued to take deep, slow breaths through his nose, fighting back the nausea.

There was a grinding noise; shocked, Mark glanced at the door aperture, as it opened to the first degree. An alien he hadn't seen before was on the other side. There were more of them? He didn't have a chance to wonder how many before noticing that this one carried one of those white devices they'd used to freeze him.

x x x

Apparently this guy had dialed back the settings considerably, because when he came to, the gravity was just starting again. Only his fingertips and toes felt icy this time, as he glanced down to see that his ankle had some sort of... boot? on it. A doctor? He glared at the alien anyway.

His eyes were a different color than Oaiea's, more of a greenish hue. The skin tone was a bit different as well. Greyer.

 _Not talking to your friend the traitor_? He hadn't been aware that aliens could smirk, but this one could.

He didn't know what to say to that. Evidently, they were monitoring his computer. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised. He just glared, as the alien puttered around what appeared to be Stormbreaker's version of a medbay. The gravity was fully back, now.

 _How is your injury now? Pain status_? The alien looked at him expectantly, as though he were a particularly interesting lab experiment. Which he supposed he probably was.

"Go fuck yourself," he suggested, glaring. Apparently his translator had been a popular download once it hit the Stormbreaker's app store. He was a little dismayed to note that the alien's computer had translated that little comment for him.

The alien just smirked again, and laughed. A deep, musical chord sequence.

 _I am the ship's doctor_ , he continued, _my name is-_ it was some musical mess of a name, but it started with something akin to an 'A'. A for Asshole, he thought, should be easy to remember.

He just kept glaring. Fuck you, he thought. At least his thoughts were still his own.

Dr. A motioned for him to stand up and follow. He wasn't sure his ankle would hold his weight, but apparently that boot had done the trick. Much better. Not that he was going to say 'thank you'. He stood uncertainly, unwilling to be seen hobbling around.

 _Not far. This way_. He motioned again for Mark to follow. He tapped his hand, in an odd gesture that Mark could tell meant 'any day now' and smirked.

Fine, fine. He followed him, slowly, down a short, curved hallway that led through a room with eight seats. One was already occupied. Another green-eyed one. This one looked rather unimpressed with him.

 _Take that thing back to the brig,_ he'd said, looking back down at whatever he was working on. He had an authoritative air about him, and Dr. A motioned for him to keep following.

* * *

 **Day 18**

His friend, the traitor? What the hell had he meant by that? Had Oaiea betrayed _him_? Or them? Did she have some kind of history with these guys? It just didn't agree with anything he knew. There was something, something he couldn't quite put his finger on, that seemed different about these guys.

What _did_ he know? Break it down, he thought. Work the problem.

Oaiea was onboard. She'd sent her ship to Earth. What could have caused her to do that? To send it somewhere that she'd constantly been worried about its safety.

To get it far away from somewhere even less safe?

Why would she leave her ship in the first place? Not by choice, was the obvious answer.

She'd sustained an injury in the process, whatever had happened. A crush injury, she'd said. How does one crush their wrist, in zero-G, anyway? Not very many ways. He looked above him to the aperture door. Nearly identical to the ones on Stargazer.

Oh, shit.

Had they tortured it out of her, then?

What information could they have wanted?

That bit was harder for him to work out. What could Oaiea have had, or known, that would bring down the wrath of these guys? What had she done?

She'd fucked around with Earth, after being told not to? Were these guys some sort of space police, come to arrest a criminal? Was _he_ the criminal? He could have broken any number of laws that he didn't know about, he supposed.

And then, this did sort of seem a lot like jail.

But, he argued with himself, these guys didn't seem like police. They seemed disorganized, violent. He realized then, what he hadn't been able to put his finger on before. They seemed _young_. For aliens, anyway.

No.

No fucking way.

Suddenly things began to click into place, as he went over the available information again with his new hypothesis.

Who were these guys? He was pretty sure he'd arrived at the correct conclusion.

Space pirates.


	6. Chapter 6

**Day 24**

Mark had tacitly and silently agreed not to injure anyone, after Dr. A had offered to let him walk to the medbay on his own this time. Fair enough. Still wasn't going to talk to him, though.

The doctor removed the ankle boot, ran something that looked like a sonogram wand along the side of the ankle, and then consulted his computer for a long time, while keeping a watchful eye on Mark.

 _The injury is repaired,_ he was informed. _How does it feel_?

Mark silently rotated his ankle, pointed his toe, and maintained a bored expression.

 _You aliens heal quickly._

Mark glared at him.

The asshole seemed to enjoy keeping up their one-sided conversation, as usual.

 _Your traitor friend has been asking to see you_. He seemed to be watching Mark closely for his reaction. Too bad he wasn't going to get one.

 _Anxious to get back to your quarters?_ He smirked. He stood and motioned for Mark to follow him. This time he turned the opposite way down the hallway. Mark followed him. This was different, at least, he'd never seen this side of the ship. It consisted of the bridge, and a small living room-looking area with chairs.

 _Sit_. Mark did as he was asked, taking a seat in one of the chairs that were designed for people with legs about half the length of his.

Dr. A appeared to confer with the alien at the flight controls, and she turned to look at him. Apparently she was his temporary babysitter.

 _I will return,_ he said, as he walked back the way they'd come.

From this vantage point, he was getting his first look at the flight controls, where the young female sat, documenting star charts. She was the only female member of the crew that he'd seen, thus far. He was trying to speculate on what exactly her duties entailed.

In due time, Dr. A returned with Oaiea in tow.

"Oaiea!" He grinned at her. "Ayyy!" He held his arms open, Fonzie-style, to offer her a hug, fairly sure that she wouldn't take him up on it, but she surprised him by walking straight into his arms. He held her tight for a long time, taking a moment to whisper, "Sorry" to her.

Dr. A looked disgusted, but the female alien at the flight controls looked absolutely appalled. He hadn't actually known that aliens could vomit, but the female alien made a sort of gagging noise and averted her eyes.

"Good to see you." She sat next to him. Her injured hand was encased in something similar to the boot the doctor had put on his ankle. She took it off, to show him. It had been mangled. Her eyes met his, and he gave her a small nod, to let her know that he'd guessed the basics of how it had happened.

 _Likewise._ She sat for a minute, refastening the supports around her injured hand.

"Is that going to heal?" He was pretty certain that an injury of that magnitude would involve an amputation, for humans.

She nodded. _It will not yet be healed when we arrive_.

 _What_ had she just said? He stared at her, eyes wide, searching her face for more information. She shook her head almost imperceptibly at him.

 _Do you remember what I once said might happen if humanity were to have any major technological breakthroughs?_

Mark thought back for a minute. She'd said it would destabilize human society. Throw Earth into chaos.

"Nothing good, if I remember correctly."

 _Nothing good_ , she paused for effect, _has happened on my planet while I was gone._

* * *

 **Hermes - Ares 4 - Mission Day 33**

As badly as he'd wanted this, and as hard as he'd fought to make it happen, Rick Martinez was now very certain that he'd had enough space travel for his lifetime. He just wanted to get home to his wife. He was done with NASA, done with the Air Force, done with chasing the impossible goals. So over it, he thought. Such a disappointment.

He was not in a good way, he thought. Throughout his life, during difficult times, he'd always been able to take comfort in his faith, and even that had deserted him now. There wasn't any Bible verse written that would make this better. The Ares 4 crew, all good people that he worked well with, had never bonded on the same level as his _real_ crew. He needed to be back with them. Needed to know that they were going to be okay. Needed to mourn with them.

"Commander, data dump is complete." He acknowledged by clicking his comm link.

After the initial flurry of excitement following Mitch Henderson's dire announcement, the crew had settled back into their daily routine, keeping to their schedules, and not really giving him any problems. They all _knew_ , though. Everyone knew that Mark was like a brother to him. He'd thought he'd been prepared for anything that Henderson could have to say. But not this. Not again.

It was hard to dismiss the fact that Mark had triumphed under impossible circumstances, more than once, but Rick just couldn't see any way around the likelihood that his friend was gone forever, this time. The long journey back from Mars in zero-G had nearly killed him, and left him with the thinned-out bones of an eighty-year old. Every aspect of space travel, the launch, the low gravity; for Mark, it was a death sentence. Oaiea's planet, from what little they knew about it, was generally agreed to be at least twenty light-years from Earth, making it a journey easily past survivability for any human. A fact that was known to both humans and aliens.

No, he had to believe that they'd picked Mark up as revenge. Some rogue alien that hadn't forgiven humanity for the deaths of their early Earth explorers, or maybe Oaiea herself had been behind it, somehow. Either way, the result was the same. Mark was gone.

Rick had long walked that tightrope between thinking like a scientist, and thinking like a man of faith. Ever since his arrival at NASA, he'd been confronted with the fact that most of his fellow astronauts were atheists. It had bothered him at first. He'd just thought that they were wrong. Agree to disagree. He'd even, despite the ribbing he'd given Mark about it, considered the fact that his crucifix had created the water that saved Mark's life to be a sort of miracle. He remembered the endless mission days aboard Hermes after the scrubbed mission, praying. He'd asked God to take care of Mark; he had felt like he had personally prayed that miracle into existence, when he'd learned of it. His belief in God, already firm, had crystalized.

God had been talking to him, to Rick Martinez, telling him, "See?" He'd felt so vindicated.

If he were truly a man of faith, then why did he feel like God had made a serious failure to plan, here?

The best-case scenario, Rick supposed, was that in a couple of years, Oaiea would arrive and tell them what had happened to Mark. He wasn't sure how much comfort that would be.

Holding his son and his wife. That was the comfort that he wanted, right now. And he'd have to wait another ten months for it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Day 124**

Sophia Roberts had returned to the place where Mark had been taken. One last time, to say goodbye. The apartment was long-empty now; a gaping hole in one wall remained, where forensics had cut away the drywall to analyze, it was like the hole she felt in her heart. A faint echo of that paralyzing fear she'd felt, on that Monday morning cut through her again.

She didn't know if her husband was dead. Somehow, she felt as though if he really were, she'd know. But he was gone. She couldn't keep dwelling on it; there were more important things at stake, now. Time to say goodbye. Her eyes closed, remembering how it had all started. The first time he'd kissed her.

"I can't do this," she whispered. What would Mark want, she asked herself. Would he think she was doing the right thing? She had to think that he would. She looked down at her hands. _Do it_ , she ordered herself. She tugged the ring from her fourth finger, hands shaking. The eternity band sparkled at her like frozen tears, as she placed it in an envelope to send back to Mark's mother.

There was a discreet knock on the open front door. It was one of the Uniformed Division officers.

"Miss? Are you ready?"

She wiped her eyes, and nodded. She wasn't ready, but she had to be strong.

 _I'll take lots of pictures for you._

She had a plane to catch.

x x x


	8. Chapter 8

**Day 273**

The plan was starting to come together, Mark thought, as he laid in his makeshift bunk. This might actually work.

It wasn't often that he allowed himself the luxury of imagining what it would feel like to make it home, see his family again. See his crew. But right now; he was feeling a little bit hopeful. The next cycle, the ship would begin its deceleration, as they approached their destination. He couldn't help thinking about them, at least for a little while. He didn't like to think what they'd gone through. It was painful to think about what his disappearance had likely done to their lives. The last time he'd slept, he'd dreamed of Sophia. Did she think he was dead? He'd been gone the better part of a year on Earth; it was a long time, he knew. And it would be another year before he could hope to return.

He hoped that he'd live to hear his mother threaten him with the ultimate "three funerals!" trump card, but his parents were in their seventies now, he could return to find one or both of them gone, he knew.

It would be fun to see Rick again. He could imagine the two of them, trying to outdo one another with tales of their space exploits. The only man who'd been to Mars twice, versus the only man to visit two different planets. Except that Rick probably wished he'd never heard of the Ares program by now. Mark had ruined it for him, again.

Valentina wouldn't remember him. She'd just started walking when he'd last seen her, at the wedding. He tried to imagine her as a three-year old, bossing Beth and Chris around. He grinned. He'd once hoped that Val would have a little cousin to boss around. Maybe it still wasn't impossible. Assuming that Sophia hadn't given up on him. He really couldn't blame her if she had, could he? They'd only been married a month; barely returned from their honeymoon. Two years was a really long time for someone to spend in that kind of limbo. It was longer than they'd even known each other.

She probably thought he was dead. How could she not?

He had to quit torturing himself like this. His chest hurt, and he could barely breathe. It felt like the beginnings of a panic attack.

Think about something else. Think about _anything_ else.

 _Oaiea_ , he asked, _tell me about your planet_.

They'd be there pretty soon, after all. Surely she would answer a few questions about it now.

 _Go to sleep_ , she replied. He rolled his eyes. That had been their nightly repartee back on the Stargazer, when she'd wanted him to turn the volume down on his laptop. Settle down. Quit bothering her. Something akin to, 'don't you have an 'off' button, human?"

 _Can you tell me what it's called_?

She sent him a message consisting of two Loop characters, and then re-sent her original message:

 _Go to sleep_.

* * *

"It's bedtime for you, squirt," Beth informed Valentina, who was playing underneath the glass-topped coffee table. She rose and walked towards the bedroom to get pajamas, when she stopped, suddenly.

She watched as Val's chubby toddler hand reached out towards the overhead glass. A nearby lamp's backlight had created a mirror effect, Beth thought. Val was seeing herself in the glass. Val giggled, patting her face. There was something; some tiny fiber of an idea, but she couldn't quite... She took the pajamas out of the drawer and returned to the doorway, where Valya was...

Talking to herself.

Using a mirror. A mirror that wasn't actually a mirror.

Beth steadied herself, clutching the doorway, closing her eyes as she focused on that tiny idea molecule, willing it to take form.

"Babe? You okay?" Chris had half-risen from his chair, alarmed.

She tossed the pajamas at him.

"I need to think," she mumbled, as she turned on her heel and headed to the closet to get her hoodie.

Chris didn't even need to be asked; he padded off to the kitchen to start the coffeemaker.

x x x


	9. Chapter 9

Mark couldn't help smiling, thinking back to when he and Johanssen had worked together with NASA to catalogue the language and other information he'd been able to glean. They'd gotten tired of the awkward-sounding Language of Oaiea's People, so Beth had shortened it to Loop, which had stuck. Mark's similarly-derived nickname for Planet of Oaiea's People had not gone over nearly so well. He rubbed his shoulder, remembering where Beth had slugged him.

Sundance seemed like an odd name for a planet, but it certainly had to be an improvement over _that_. The first of the two characters was Sun, which consisted of a circle containing two superimposed triangles that formed a six-pointed star. There were six smaller circles, one to represent each of the six planets in the solar system, set around it. The second symbol was the verb Dance, and it showed a square set with smaller, angled, concentric squares, giving the suggestion of motion.

Moving day, he thought to himself. Mark had been ordered to pack up his belongings and report to the medbay. All of his stuff easily fit into a sealed container the size of a small suitcase; his laptop and cellphone, his wallet and keys. So utterly useless to him here, but he still kept them in his pocket, out of habit. There was his house key to his parents house in Chicago, keys to his apartment and Sophia's, the key to the new house they'd bought. Car keys, plus the several unidentifiable keys that had been orbiting his keychain since college and maybe before that. His Hermès jacket, a gift from Sophia on their first Christmas together. The Stormbreaker crew apparently found the idea of wearing an article of clothing made from animal hide to be very in keeping with the caveman they had expected Mark to be.

He'd been wearing a pair of jeans and a button-down on the night they'd grabbed him, and although they were quite shabby now from use, they were clean, and they were _human_ , so he decided to wear them, in honor of being the first human to set foot on Sundance. Sunwalk? It had a nice sound to it. He'd have to get a "1" tattoo, along with the Sundance characters, when he got home.

The only other clothing available to him was the Stormbreaker-issue flight suits, and while they _had_ made an attempt to alter some of them to fit him, they were uncomfortable and he didn't think he looked very good in them. Jeans felt infinitely better, even if they did have frayed hems and threadbare knees.

The one item of alien clothing that he _had_ fully embraced without any qualms at all was their socks. They were wonderful socks, stretchy and soft, whisper thin and warm. Sundance socks were going to be a hit on Earth, someday. His bulky cotton Earth socks were bundled in the bottom of his storage container, practically forgotten.

He'd managed to do a good job of keeping himself in shape, this time, too. Beck would be proud. He'd done t'ai chi daily, from the first day, and worked himself up to an hour of isometric exercise as his ankle healed. Whatever awaited him on the surface, at least he was in his top physical condition. And when he got home, well... Martinez had better watch out, because Mark was going to give him a run for his money when it came to Rick's beloved boxing.

Mark's feet started to feel light as the centripetal gravity slowed, indicating that it was time to meet Dr. A in the medbay. He headed up the ladder to the tween-deck, storage container in hand.

The doctor had some bad news for him.

 _The deceleration sequence will begin shortly, so I will be using this_ , he gestured to the white device that they had frozen him with before, _and you will remain here in medbay until after we land_.

"Oh, hell no!" Mark burst out. Not again.

" _Would you prefer your bones in a liquefied state_?" He smirked.

"Oh. Well, okay. I guess you talked me into it." He grinned back. Dr. A _was_ an asshole, but he wasn't really so bad.

* * *

 **Arecibo, Puerto Rico**

"What would you say the odds are that this is going to work?" Venkat asked.

"No idea," Beth replied, shortly. "It's the proverbial shot in the dark." Literally and figuratively, she thought.

Venkat frowned.

"This is a lot of funding for a shot in the dark."

Beth pretended to rustle in her purse with one hand, eyes never leaving the screen. "Oh hell, I'm sorry. I'm all _out_ of fucks to give," she deadpanned, as Venkat rolled his eyes.

"Pretty sure we can move this through Appropriations," Venkat mused, "But if this works." He trailed off. It could change everything.

"Then congress is going to write this project a blank check?"

"Something like that. Okay, well, I don't want to be in your way while you're trying to work."

Beth nodded.

"Good luck."

She took a sip of her coffee. "Thanks. Did I mention that I got the idea from my two-year old?"

Venkat started to ask, thought better of it, and shook his head.

* * *

 **Hermes - Ares 4**

"The delay has gotten so much shorter!" Marissa grinned at Rick. "I'm counting the days!"

Rick smiled at her. "You look good."

Rick looked tired and grim. "We miss you."

David waved. "Hi, Daddy."

"You're getting so big, buddy. Looks you've grown an inch since last week. How was your soccer game?"

David frowned. "We lost."

"Blame it on the rest of the team," Rick joked, "That's what I like to do."

"Daddy is kidding." Marissa gave Rick the stinkeye, while David laughed.

"Go on, give that kid a hug from Dad," Rick told Marissa.

Marissa pounced on David and gave him a bear hug, squeezing him so tight that he squeaked.

"I can't breathe!" David emerged, giggling. "Love you, Dad."

"Love you too, buddy. See you in a few weeks."

David waved again, and went offscreen.

"You doing okay? You look tired." Marissa asked.

Rick hestitated for a minute, and then said, "Just want to get home to you. It's been a long drive. What's going on?"

"Have you emailed with any of the Ares 3 crew, lately?"

He shook his head. "No, I was thinking though, that I'd like to see them all when I get back. Do you think you could set something up?"

"Johanssen is out of the country," Marissa tried to think, "And I don't know if she'll be back by then. Beck is in single-dad mode these days. It's very adorable." She grinned at Rick. "But I think I can get everyone else." She frowned, then, thinking of Mark.

"What about Sophia, any chance?"

"I don't even know how to get in touch with her. I could try the White House, but I think she's been trying to keeping a low profile. I don't know if she'd want to come back to DC and get everyone talking."

"The longer she waits, the bigger the story's going to be," Rick rolled his eyes and smirked.

Marissa gave him a look. "It's good to see you smile. Get some rest."

"You too. Prepare your body, _mamacita-rica_ ," He favored her with his smarmiest grin.

"Oh my God. Three weeks. You're so on."

"That's what I'm sayin'."

x x x


	10. Chapter 10

The first thing Mark noticed was how heavy he felt. Not nearly as bad as when he'd done his long stint in zero-G, but it wasn't something he'd be able to shrug off. His spinal muscles were screaming, as though he'd had a particularly tough physical therapy session and neglected to cool down. He'd had worse, though. He couldn't quite wrench his eyes open yet, so he listened, instead. It was quiet. So quiet. He tried to focus on something, anything, to listen to, and found nothing specific at all. Was everyone gone?

His legs felt like they were encased in ice, up to the knees, but he knew it would fade away, soon enough. With nothing to listen to, he went back to trying to get his eyes open. Barely a flutter of response, still. It would be a few minutes, he guessed.

 _So boring_.

After nearly a year's journey getting here, Mark was anxious to get on with it; he was annoyed by the realization that he wouldn't be arriving in top form, after all. Also, he was anxious to be able to get his eyes open. He tried again, and they finally creaked open a millimeter.

He was still in the medbay, no longer strapped in.

His computer chimed, and then made an odd error chord. Uh, okay. He wondered what _that_ was all about, but he wouldn't be able to find out for some time yet; it was somewhat maddening. His arms were still frozen to the elbows.

He was bored enough, and curious enough, that he decided to try to use his elbow to pry open his left hand and access the computer. On the third try, he managed it.

What the hell? He'd just received a message. But it wasn't from Oaiea.

It was from... himself?

He tried to access it, and got the error chord again.

The menu flickered briefly, as the computer attempted to update its software.

 **Signal broadcast** was lit up.

He wondered what it was broadcasting.

Weird, he thought. He'd never seen it do anything like that. Where would his computer get the idea he was trying to send himself a message? Was it even possible to have two systems keyed to the same person? He didn't really see the point. Maybe there were too many other communicators nearby, here? His was an older one, maybe it was getting confused?

He looked at the computer suspiciously. He tried to access the new message again. It was gone.

"What the hell," he whispered, gratified that his voice worked again. He was in control of his eyes again, too.

With nothing better to do, he closed his eyes again and dozed for a while.

* * *

Chime. Chime. Chime. Chime.

His computer was going fucking bonkers today. Mark frowned at it.

Chime. Chime. It paused for a moment. Chime.

"Broken piece of..." he trailed off. "What the _fuck?_ " he whispered.

New messages from a sender that he'd never seen before. The messages were being sent via Oaiea's ship, the Stargazer; he recognized those Loop characters in an instant. He leapt to his feet, heart pounding. Oh please, don't let this be a mistake. Oh God, he thought.

He dragged them over to the translator. Each message, and there were seven, was empty and each header had only one character.

 _Hello._

 _From._

 _Earth._

 _Do._

 _You._

 _Read._

 _Respond._

There was a moment of silence, as the magnitude of what he was seeing began to sink in.

"HELL YEA!" he yelled. He pumped his fist in the air. His throat began to burn and ache, as tears welled up in his eyes. His hands went to his eyes, and his knees gave way as he sobbed; he'd never dared to dream of this. He came back to himself some time later, sitting on the medbay floor. It felt like Pathfinder, all over again. Only this time it was Earth that had somehow managed to figure out how to contact _him_. They hadn't given up on him. They'd just kept looking until they'd found the fucking tree! He couldn't even imagine how they'd managed it.

Holy shit. Where did he even start?

He fumbled with the menu, trying to think what to say.

 _Loud and clear!_ He double-tapped to send. The send time was surprisingly quick; under a minute. They'd really made some breakthroughs on their technology. He wondered if he dared to try a video link. If it worked, he thought, who would be on the other end? He initiated the link and held his breath.

* * *

 **Arecibo, Puerto Rico**

 _Loud and clear!_

"Oh my God!" Beth was on her feet, shouting; hugging Venkat, who whooped and hollered as the two of them stared at a message from their lost astronaut.

"He's alive." Venkat was beside himself, as he pulled out his phone to start making calls, when a string of Loop characters issued from the monitor, and Beth flew to the translator.

"It's a video link request!" She was crying, but she didn't care, as she accepted it.

Half a minute later, Mark flickered into view. His eyes were wet, too, Beth noticed. And he looked like a hippie. His hair was long and shaggy, and he'd grown out a beard that suited him not at all. Beth grinned, as his face lit up. She knew he could see them now, Venkat and Beth.

"Hey guys! Beth Johanssen! I knew this must be your doing!" He was laughing, as he gave her the highest compliment that one astronaut could bestow upon another: "You are a steely-eyed missile woman," he grinned at her. "And you're a nerdy little hacker, and I love you guys!"

"Mark! It's great to see you alive and well!" Venkat began, "Please tell us your status." They watched Mark and waited for him to receive. Mark was sitting with his back against what appeared to be an examination table. He appeared to be alone.

"Oh god, where do I fucking start," he grinned at them, "I'm here on board the Stormbreaker. It's a really, _really_ fucked-up fast ship. And you guys aren't going to believe this, but you just happened to contact me as I'm waking up from being frozen. Again. And um, the ship has landed, but I haven't gone outside yet. I don't know where everyone is. I just woke up and I was getting these error messages, and then, wow! You actually managed to build a motherfucking communicator on your own, Beth? What the _FUCK_! I don't even know what to say to that!"

"Language, Mark!" Venkat grinned at him, "Tell us your status. Are you safe? What's your physical condition? Where are you?" Venkat had started a video conference during the half-minute downtimes between messages. Teddy Sanders, and the President were about to get some surprising news.

"I'm on Oaiea's planet!" He grinned, "The name in English is Sundance. I'm doing fine. The three punks that took me from my old apartment that day, they smashed up my ankle pretty bad, but it's all healed now. Stormbreaker here has a crew of eight, not counting me and Oaiea, oh, I didn't tell you already that she's here, too. And she's fine. I guess she's already gotten off the ship by now. The food on this ship is awful, by the way!" Mark paused to take a breather, as he began to queue up his next round of questions, for Beth.

"Mark, the President is watching this via video link, and he wants to say that it's great to see you, and congratulations on landing on... Sundance?" Venkat raised an eyebrow at the odd name. "Are you going to be able to return to Earth, Mark? How long will you be on the planet, do you know?"

"Venk, I'll answer that in a second, but I want to ask some questions first. Beth, tell me how everyone's doing, please? Sophia? My parents? The rest of the crew? Ares 4? That little rugrat of yours?" Mark paused for a moment, trying to remember what Venkat had wanted to know. Oh, yea. "Tell Perry hi, and tell him to executive order Beth to make us a Scrabble app on this thing, and I don't know when I'm coming home. If things go as expected, within a few months. I hope."

Beth turned away from the camera, and mouthed to Venkat, "Do I tell him?" Venkat looked distressed, he hadn't thought about that. "You know him better than I do," Venkat hissed at her, "You decide."

"Hi Mark," Beth started, trying not to cry again, "Um, your parents are fine. Marissa talked to your mom not long ago. Martinez will be back from Ares 4 pretty soon. Chris is back home taking care of Val. I'm here in Puerto Rico at the Arecibo. Valentina is great, she's getting big, and um, I don't know, um, Vogel and his wife will be in the States in a couple of weeks. Melissa is fine." She trailed off, not sure what to say about Sophia, but she had to say something, so she soldiered on, "Sophia is fine, as far as I know. I haven't talked to her in awhile. She's um, she's keeping a low profile, so they tell me." She glanced over her shoulder at Venkat, with a 'was that okay?' look. He nodded. They watched, as Mark received. A perplexed, worried look appeared on Mark's face when Beth got to the part about Sophia. Beth sighed.

"Beth Johanssen, you're a terrible liar. Please tell me. Just say it." Mark looked stricken. "God, just say it. She dumped me, then? Thinks I'm dead? Moved on with someone else? Oh my god," he closed his eyes, composure completely broken. "Just tell me. It's nothing that I haven't already thought about, a million times, believe me. I just need to know."

"Oh my god, Mark. No. No. Nothing like that. She's fine. I mean, as far as I know. I haven't talked to her. Nobody has. Well, maybe the President has, I'll ask him in a second, if you want. No. It's um... I don't know whether she thinks you're alive or dead, Mark, I never asked her. I guess she seemed hopeful enough, the last time I saw her, maybe a month after you disappeared. I don't know. The thing is, Mark." Beth paused for a moment, to turn around and look at Venkat again, "The thing is, Mark... um, I can't really... Okay. Here's what I know. She felt like she wasn't safe. We didn't know who took you, or why, or how. The press was hounding her constantly. She kind of had a... a nervous breakdown? I guess? And then she told your mother, that she um, she couldn't handle any of it anymore, she was moving away. She said she was going to change her name, and um... well, I think that's all that I can tell you. Anything else is none of my business." Beth fell silent, as they watched Mark, who had an odd expression. He nodded.

"Okay. Okay, I... I think I got the general idea. Please tell Perry to make sure she knows I'm okay, okay? Right away? Get her to Puerto Rico if you can. Tell everyone I'm okay. I, uh, I'm going to go find someone here, and go on outside. I'll call you back after, after I don't know, when I have a chance. Watney out."

The screen went dark, as Beth and Venkat looked at one another.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Arecibo, Puerto Rico**_

 _It was time to test out her theory._

 _Venkat watched from over her shoulder, anxiously._

 _"When will you know if it's worked?" he asked._

 _"It's quite possible that we won't," Beth replied cagily._

 _ **Signal broadcast** was now lit up in green._

 _"Now we wait?"_

 _"Yep. Twenty-three minutes."_

* * *

 _"Oh, we've got something," crowed Beth, grinning. "I'm not sure what, but I've definitely got something, here."_

 _ **ERROR**_

 _ **ERROR**_

 _ **ERROR**_

 _ **ERROR**_

 _ **ERROR**_

 _"Shit!"_

 _"Sorry, Johanssen. You had my hopes up there for a minute, though." Venkat grinned at her, sympathetically. "I thought we'd be talking with Watney, any minute."_

 _"Damn it, so did I." Beth shoved her chair back. "I need a break," she mumbled. "Back in a few."_

 _Venkat pulled out his phone to pass along the bad news. A flash from Johanssen's laptop caught his attention, as a long series of Loop characters scrolled across the screen._

 _"Johanssen?" he yelled._

 _"Yea?" she answered, barely audible._

 _"You'd better come see this."_

 _Beth nearly dropped her coffee._

 _"Oh, hell-o!" She grinned, already trying to parse the words, while simultaneously pulling up the translation app on a different computer. "Looks like a bunch of verbs? It says, 'to make, to name, to find, to send? Some kind of menu."_

 _"A set-up menu?" Venkat guessed, sounding hopeful._

 _"That's what I'm thinking." Beth sounded thoughtful. "This is a newer version of the menu system that Watney had. That's weird. Like, a lot newer. Look the date code here. How is that even possible?"_

 _Venkat was shaking his head in disbelief, smiling. "You hacked the aliens. You tell me."_

 _"Actually, it's more like the opposite. Their system is like a virus, see? It infects any ships and computers it comes across with the newest version any of them has available. So when I set this up, pretending to be Mark's communicator, using that captured signal, and bounced it off Oaiea's ship, it mirrored an update back to me, and infected my setup here with a new copy of the software. Just like talking to myself in the mirror."_

 _Venkat paused to consider. "I get the basic idea," he said. "So Watney saw that?" he asked. "Or not?"_

 _"I think the ship just acted as a relay to send it on to wherever he is." She sounded unsure for a moment. She didn't like to confront the possibility that Mark was already dead. It had been so long now. "And I'm really not sure what would happen if two systems keyed to the same individual tried to exchange data. An error message, probably."_

 _"Now what? You set up a new user identity, and we try calling Watney again?"_

 _"Yes. This is going to be the super-ghetto Speak & Spell version, though," Johanssen rolled her eyes. "We don't have all of the input methods that a communicator usually uses. We can try sending off a message, but we'll have to send everything in Loop, and only one character at a time. He can translate it." If he gets it, she amended silently._

* * *

Beth Johanssen was just getting started.

"They should have thought twice before they took our guy," she chuckled, as she ran the next stage of her plan past Chris, on the phone.

"Jesus Christ, Beth, are you trying to start World War 3?" Chris sounded shocked. And impressed.

"I think it would technically be Interplanetary War 1," she grinned, "but no. I'm just going to show them a little tiny display of our capabilities, that's all."

"I am so turned on, right now." Chris admitted. "It sucks that you're on a tropical island in the Caribbean without me," he said, slyly.

"Yea, 'cause I've been spending so much time at the beach," she deadpanned. "How's Valya?"

"Sleeping. I've been feeding her McDonalds every day, that's cool, right?" Chris deadpanned back.

"Funny."

"Actually, Val and I are going to be taking a little trip. Tomorrow morning." Chris was being serious, now.

"Where?"

"Tortola, and then to see you."

"Tortola? You going on vacation without me?" Beth sounded mildly annoyed. "Seriously?"

"It's business. Well, sort of. Someone's got to go tell Sophia about Mark. Lynn Watney and I are going to go out there and tell her together and then we'll all be headed to Arecibo."

"Ah. I didn't realize you'd be in on that, but I guess it makes sense. Didn't realize Sophia was so nearby. I guess the Roberts can't go, themselves."

"No, not without blowing her cover. And this way I've got a good excuse to come see you." He laughed.

"Nice. I'm surprised they're not sending Henderson or Sanders to talk to her, though."

"I'm the one that advised against it, actually," Chris paused for a moment, "I think Sophia never wants to see either of them, ever again. It'll be easier, coming from us."

"Watney is going to owe us a _lot_ of babysitting when he gets back."

"Hell yea, he is. Okay, I've got to go pack, babe. I love you, and we'll see you in a couple of days."

"Have fun taking the two-year old on an airplane by yourself."

Beck was silent for a moment. "Oh, dear God," he said softly. "That's going to suck."

"Love you, too!" Beth said cheerily. He could almost hear the smirk. "Bye!"


	12. Chapter 12

**Hermes - Ares 4**

Rick couldn't help it, he'd been smiling so hard and so long now that his face was starting to hurt. The rest of the Ares 4 crew was in a buoyant mood as well, as they'd broken with schedule to have an impromptu gathering in the rec. They were chattering and laughing, as they raised a toast.

"To Watney! He lives another Sol!" They cheered, and laughed, as disco music blared in the background.

None of them noticed when their commander slipped away.

How could he have ever doubted, he thought, as he laid in his bunk, still smiling. Watney was okay.

His personal items for this particular outing had not included a wooden crucifix, this time. NASA had nixed that. But he _had_ brought his abuela's rosary with him, and he held it in his hands now, as he whispered, "Thank you."

 **Road Town, B.V.I.**

"It just feels wrong," Beck was thinking out loud, "driving on the left side of the road."

"It does take some getting used to," Lynn agreed with him, as they pulled into the narrow, unpaved driveway. It was a tiny, non-descript little island house, with a metal roof. There were more security cameras than an average home, but otherwise, Beck wouldn't have suspected that the daughter of a sitting president lived here, in this pastel-peach painted cottage.

He unbuckled Val, and held her hand as Lynn knocked on the door. "Not home," Lynn reported.

Beck grinned to see, at that very moment, a plainclothes agent stroll by nonchalantly.

"Guess she's still at work," he ventured. "It's still early. School just let out an hour ago. Should we wait?"

Lynn was already walking along the porch to the western side, where a swing hung from the eaves. "Would Val like to come sit here with me?" she asked. It was very peaceful. The ocean was just visible to the west. It was late afternoon, and the sun was getting low, shimmering bright across the waves.

She pointed out a flowery vine that was climbing up a nearby tree to Val, as she clambered up to sit next to her, much as she'd done with Mark when he was small.

"That's bougainvillea, see?" she said, as Val pointed towards it. "It's pretty, but don't touch. Thorns. Ow."

"Don't eat any of it, either," quipped Beck, as he sat down on the other side of Val. "Because I really don't want to clean that up." The swing creaked, as the three of them rocked, taking in the natural beauty all around them.

Lynn smiled. The last twenty-four hours had been like a roller coaster, she thought, when she and Richard had been informed for the third time that their son was alive. She'd had some practice now, on how these sessions went. The bad kind, and the good kind.

Sophia hadn't had much practice with Mark and his flair for dramatic living. Losing him had tested Sophia to her limits, and Lynn was glad that Sophia appeared to have found some peace, here. This felt like a good place for healing. And growing. She could hardly wait to see-

"Lynn? Chris?" Sophia stood in the driveway, holding her son.

"Why are you both..." she trailed off, eyes wide, before she could finish asking, as Lynn went to her, folding them both into a hug as she told her.

"Mark is okay." Lynn held her tight, as Sophia struggled to find her voice. "He's fine. He's in contact with NASA again, and we're going to take you to talk to him, tonight."

* * *

"I feel like I'm dreaming," Sophia said. "And I'm going to wake up, and none of this is going to be real."

Sophia was looking more settled now, and was starting to run out of questions, a while later, as the five of them sat in the tiny, darkening living room. The sun was setting.

Lynn was holding her baby grandson like she would never let go, kissing his tiny fists; smoothing the tufts of reddish-blond curls on his head. "Keep on laughing, Dr. Beck," she growled at him, as Beck went right on grinning at the two of them.

The ring sparkled once more, from Sophia's finger, as she squeezed Lynn's hand.

"He doesn't even have a passport yet," Sophia said, picking up the phone to start making some calls. "But we can get it sorted out. Mark needs to meet this little guy."

"Mark's going to piss himself," muttered Chris, sotto voce. "In a good way!" He held up his hands defensively, when the women both turned to look at him.

Valya scooted up next to Sophia so that she could pat the baby. "Mine!" she said, touching the baby's soft cheek with her dimpled little hand. She had a big smile, as she inspected the baby in big-sister fashion, claiming him in the name of Valentina.

"Guess she told _us_ ," laughed Chris. "Sophia, do you want me to help you pack? We've got a plane to catch in just two hours, and if we miss it, there's not another one til tomorrow afternoon."

Sophia nodded gratefully at him while she juggled paperwork and the phone. "Suitcase is under the bed," she whispered to Chris. "First name Mark; middle name Banks," she told the consulate.

Lynn walked with the baby to look out the west window, as the sunset came to its glorious conclusion. She knew it would be a long time until everything was right again, in her world, but as she hugged her sleepy grandson, snuggled on her shoulder, and looked out over the water, she had to admit that this was a pretty good feeling.


	13. Chapter 13

His mind was a turbulent swirl of emotion as he made his way from the empty medbay to the tween-deck. A nervous breakdown? He felt dazed; he didn't even know what to think about that. Out of all of the worrisome scenarios that he'd tried not to dwell on during the long voyage, that one hadn't even occurred to him. It hurt to even think about it, now. Obviously, there was more to the story, but he hadn't been able to make himself hear any of it right now. It was too much. There was a crushing sense of guilt, and anger at the circumstances that had been beyond his control; but right now was not the time.

Focus, he told himself.

The ship was quiet and still, and he wondered again where everyone was. He unbolted his storage container. It seemed to weigh a lot more than it had when he had placed it there. Everything seemed to weigh more.

In fact, he was beginning to suspect that Sundance gravity was even greater than that of Earth. Not by a lot, but he noticed that the pads of his feet were pressed down flatter, in his shoes, than he thought they'd ever done on Earth.

The lower airlocks were both open, and as Mark made his way towards one, warm air from the planet's surface was wafting up towards him, bringing a strange autumn-leaves and ozone scent with it. There was nobody down here, either, he noticed, and he wondered how long the ship had been on the ground by then. He was close enough to see the outdoor light filtering in, and he paused a moment. Jesus, he was really doing this?

He decided that he'd better record this moment for humanity; he pulled up the menu to capture video, and turned it on. The ground outside, in shadow beneath the ship, appeared to be a sandy mix of gravel. His feet crunched down on it, as he stepped out, and had his first look around.

The sky overhead was wide and clear, a light lavender blue color that wasn't too different from Earth, really. But the sun, now _that_ was different. It looked enormous in the sky. In fact, apart from what appeared to be the outline of a day-lit moon, it was the singular feature of the Sundance sky. There were no clouds. In fact, there appeared to be no wind, either. The clarity of the air and the flatness of the surface made the horizon look very far away, a sharply defined line against pinkish sky.

First. He reminded himself, with a grin, as he turned back to have his first look at the outside of the Stormbreaker. It wasn't the most attractive ship design he'd ever seen. It resembled a squat small town water-tower with a tall nose-cone section. It had a similar burnished-tortoiseshell texture to that of the Stargazer.

The sound of his own voice, saying his own name, startled the hell out of him then, and he whirled around.

 _Mark Watney_. The alien greeted him, holding his hand up in an approximation of a human waving 'hi'.

Suddenly feeling a great wealth of sympathy for how Oaiea must have felt on Earth; this was intimidating as hell; he raised his arm in reply, grateful that they'd only sent a single alien to greet him, rather than a large group. The alien introduced himself, but neither the name nor what Mark assumed was his job title made it through the translator. He nodded, and made an attempt at a smile.

 _The Stormbreaker is welcomed home; its crew and passengers are to be interviewed for an investigation. I am afraid that I must inform you that theirs was not a sanctioned mission. They did not obtain the proper permission to bring an alien to this planet, among other wrongdoings._

"They didn't ask _my_ permission, either." Mark gave him a pointed look. The alien nodded, and motioned for him to follow, so he did. They walked along an outdoor concourse that Mark supposed was the Sundance version of an airport. There were other, smaller ships scattered at a fair distance. The landscape was shockingly flat, Mark noticed again. There were no faraway mountains or hills. There were somewhat distant buildings, but no apparent roads that led to them. Mark felt pretty certain that he couldn't walk that far; his feet were already aching against the heavy gravity, but neither did he feel like admitting that. He'd keep walking for now.

 _You would not have chosen to visit our planet?_ The alien looked at him for confirmation, looking fascinated. The expression reminded him suddenly of Oaiea, and he was beginning to suspect that he knew who this must be. The chalk-white skin, the milky blue eyes. The air of authority.

"No," he said, as the alien looked at him again. "It's fine, I'm here now. But I would have preferred that they choose someone else. I've already spent more time away from Earth than any other human."

 _A Traveler is a Traveler for life, are they not_? The alien looked at him intently. _I was born a Traveler, and will die one. You claim to be Traveler, and yet would have declined the opportunity to visit another inhabited planet?_

"Your sister didn't explain it to you, already?" Mark grinned at him. It was gratifying to see the stunned expression on the alien's face that told him he'd guessed correctly.

 _Clever. Oaiea_ _did offer her opinion, but I prefer to hear an explanation from you directly. The two factions that govern our world will both be interviewing you. It would be wise for you to have a solid explanation for their anticipated questions. You and I will spend the next days preparing your statement._

"Say your name for me, please?" Mark asked, as he pulled up the menu to assign Oaiea's brother a name that he had some hope of pronouncing. The first couple of syllables sounded vaguely similar to the name Ian.

"To answer your question, Ian, as I'm sure you know; on Earth, an astronaut doesn't become an astronaut because he's born into a family of them. It's a relatively new occupation. Humans only discovered flight one hundred-twenty years ago. It took us another fifty years to get astronauts into space, and another seventy years to get astronauts to Mars. We're quick learners. But the simple answer to your question is that there are far more humans who are qualified and want to be astronauts, than there are actual opportunities for humans to become astronauts. Therefore, it's not a lifetime job."

 _Interesting_. _Do you wish for sanctions to be carried out against the three crew members that caused your injury?_

They had walked a long way, to the end of the concourse, where Mark noticed a ramp leading underground to some sort of mass-transit. His feet were glad to see it.

"Where are we going? And no, I don't think so. Humans do not approve of," Mark grinned, "war-like behavior, but in this case, an apology would be nice. And an assurance that I will not be prevented from returning to Earth."

 _The Citizen's Council, and the Traveler's Council were able to agree that you shall be housed in the barracks in the Capitol, where I also live._ Ian gestured in the general direction of the buildings.

 _Under normal circumstance, of course, a Traveler would not wish to be housed apart from his ship, but_ my _ship is on its way back to Earth, and_ you _are a Traveler with no ship at all._


	14. Chapter 14

**Arecibo, Puerto Rico**

"Well, they _did_ say they wanted peace, friendship, and understanding," laughed Beth, as she packaged up the Stormbreaker-class schematic to forward on to JPL and NASA. "Friends _like_ to share, right?"

"They certainly do." agreed Venkat, with a smile.

"And what better way for us to understand each other than for them to generously grant us unfettered access to their entire historical record?" It was a rhetorical question, because Sundance had not made any such generous offer. At least, not on purpose.

They were quickly gaining some understanding, however. One day after Beth's breakthrough, the agencies and universities around the world were reeling in shock as they gained undreamed-of information. Thousands of years of information from Sundance were filtering down through the channels, as the various groups of scientists and academics began to dig in.

Hypothesis and guesses were only just beginning to give way to knowledge and facts, as Beth disseminated treasure-troves of information from the central database. It would take years, she knew, for Earth to be able to decipher and understand everything they were learning today. But they were getting started. And Sundance was going to get the opportunity to learn some things as well. Like not to underestimate humanity.

Oaiea had carried back to her people the current state of progress on Earth two years ago, sharing almost nothing about Sundance with them in return. Well, now it's time to even the score, thought Beth. The next phase of her plan still awaited final approval from the President, but she had every expectation that Roberts would be in complete agreement with what needed to happen next.

"We need to talk to Watney, damn it," she said.

"He's been on the surface now for nearly 48 hours," worried Venkat. "Why hasn't he contacted us?"

"Well, we can't contact him first." reminded Beth. They couldn't risk tipping off the aliens that Mark was in contact with Earth again, if Mark had decided to withhold that information for strategic reasons, which he probably had. He'd signed off so abruptly that they hadn't had a chance to plan.

"Why don't you take a break, Johanssen," Venkat suggested. "Visit with Dr. Beck, get some sleep."

She was exhausted. She nodded. "I'll be back tomorrow."

x x x

Valya was already asleep when Beth returned, in the dead center of the queen-sized bed, taking up far more room than one toddler was entitled to. Beth chuckled, as she laid down next to her, gently tucking an arm around her. Chris opened his eyes, briefly, giving her a raised eyebrow.

"Nothing new," she whispered. He closed his eyes again, reaching for her hand.

"He'll be fine," he whispered. He kissed her hand. "Get some sleep."

He didn't have to tell her twice. The next thing she knew, it was morning, and Chris was helping Valya get dressed.

"Shh," he was saying in a whisper, "Don't wake Mama up."

"Too late," she groaned. "Come here, squirt." Val was all smiles as Beth hugged her tight. "Good morning."

"Mine!" Val giggled.

"Missed you, little critter." Beth set Val carefully back on her feet, as she sat up, groggy. "Did Daddy take you on an airplane?"

"Thwee airpanes!" bragged Val.

"Regular little world traveler now, huh?" She grinned.

"When do you need to be back?" asked Chris.

"Noon, I guess. Sooner if something happens."

"Sophia wanted you for a minute, if you're not busy. She's in 306."

"Mmkay," Beth agreed. "Coffee, first."

x x x

Sophia opened the door, pulled Beth inside, and hugged her for a long time. "I can't ever thank you enough," she said, hugging her again.

Beth grinned and looked down. This was kind of embarrassing. "It's no big deal. Just doing my thing," she mumbled. She noticed the baby then, and walked over to where Mark and Sophia's son was cooing, in the portable crib the hotel had provided.

"He wakes up so early!" Sophia smiled ruefully.

"I can't even imagine," Beth grinned, "It was hard enough when Val was this age. And I had Chris helping me out. Doing everything yourself? And working full-time? Wow."

Sophia handed her a data stick. "All the pictures and video I've taken, since he was born. You think you could get it to Mark?"

She nodded. "I can figure something out." She grinned at Sophia again. "This is going to be like something out of a telenovela. You about ready to head out?"

x x x

"Okay," Venkat told Mark, "Let us know, if things change. We'll be standing at ready. Johanssen is almost here, with your wife. And-" he caught himself, just in time. "And your mother," he finished, lamely.

"I'm going to be here at Ian's place in the capitol, for the time being," Mark replied. "It's secure here, and I have at least a few hours before anyone will be looking for me."

The lab door flew open, then, and Venkat pushed his chair back. "Okay. Kapoor out. Going to give you guys some privacy," he said.

Sophia sat down a few moments later. There was a thirty-second time lapse; she held the baby on her lap, facing him towards the camera, and she paused for a few moments, unsure of what to say. Mark was sitting in a dark-walled room, the light from his laptop glowing in the background.

"Mark? I'm so glad you're okay. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I didn't tell you. I was going to, as soon as we moved in to the new house, but..." Mark could see them now; she watched his expression morph from confused, to shocked, to excited, and back to confused again. His hands were covering his face, then, the camera angle shaking violently. Sophia felt dizzy, sitting there waiting for him to say something. She felt like she could barely breathe.

Finally he choked out, "Hi." He was crying, and Sophia found that she was, too. "That's what Beth didn't want to tell me before. Oh my _God_ ," he exhaled sharply, in some jagged combination of coughing and laughter. His voice was shaky as he spoke again "Is he, I mean, it's a boy? Right? What's his name? Just, just tell me everything. Don't ever stop talking." He raked his long hair back from his face with one hand, looking completely overwhelmed.

Sophia chuckled at that. "His name's Mark. But I call him by his middle name. Banks. Um, I took some pictures for you. He's three months old." She watched Mark's expression change again, when he heard the name, and he broke out into a wide grin.

"Banks? You named him after Ernie Banks?" He held his head again, smiling that lopsided grin that she loved at them. "Can you get him any closer to the camera?"

"I thought it was appropriate. He's been my very own Mr. Sunshine." Sophia smiled at him, and scooted closer to the camera so that the baby was alone on the viewing screen. She held him there for a long time, waiting for Mark to reply.

"God, he's beautiful, Soph." He reached his hand toward the camera, as though he were touching the baby's face. "I just can't believe... I mean, I know we talked about maybe someday. Having kids. Always figured I'd have nine months to get used to the idea, before..." he trailed off, grinning at them again. "I don't even know what to say! Wait. Oh my god. Wait! You named him after Ernie Banks? Does that mean... holy shit! No! I missed it?!" He doubled over, laughing.

Sophia laughed out loud then, startling the baby. Her shoulders shook with laughter as she nodded. "Yep. The Cubs won the World Series last season."

x x x


	15. Chapter 15

Now he couldn't sleep.

Mark laid awake, thinking over the most incredible conversation of his life. Every cell in his body felt completely awake. He had a son. The need to get home, _right fucking now_ , was so acute now that he wanted to run outside and scream it from the rooftops. Contenting himself for the moment by looking at more of the pictures she'd sent, Mark suddenly realized something.

He didn't really know where home was, anymore. He'd been stunned to learn that Sophia had left the United States and started over on an island in the British Virgin Islands that he'd barely even heard of. Tortola? It brought up almost no memories at all, except that he thought maybe Sophia had mentioned it once as a possible honeymoon destination. She'd sold their new house in DC; she'd never even moved in. He'd spent the last year trying not to think about it, but when he had, he'd always pictured her there. Right where he'd left her. Waiting for him. He supposed he should have known that that wouldn't have been her style. And now she was in her first year as a small-town primary school teacher? It was something she'd always wanted to do.

It felt pretty strange to know that someone else had chosen his future home without consulting him, not that he blamed her. She'd said that he would love it there; it was peaceful and the islanders were friendly and protective of her and the boy. The more he thought about it, the more perfect it was. The quiet life, on an island in the Caribbean? Yeah, he could deal with that.

He wasn't sure if he could deal with living in a pink house though. Seriously, what the fuck. He grinned. He'd need to spare his little boy the indignity, and paint it some other color.

* * *

It seemed like it had been no time at all, when he woke up. It was so damned strange, living on a planet where there was no night. Fifteen hour cycles were the norm, instead. His natural Circadian rhythm did not approve of this arrangement one bit, and he was always getting tired at inappropriate times. He'd attempted to keep to a 24-hour schedule when he was onboard the Stormbreaker, but now it was time to go with the flow. When in Rome, he thought.

He supposed he'd known that it had been considered theoretically possible for a red-dwarf star to have a planet that supported life. It was another thing entirely to be waking up on one. He sat up, yawned and stretched. As it turned out, Sundance did not rotate on an axis, like Earth. Instead, it was tidally-locked. Always facing the sun. Like dancers, locked together, planet and sun. Maybe the name Sundance made more sense than he'd originally thought.

One half the planet was always in sunlight. No axis meant that there were no seasons, and no changing weather. One large, oval-shaped continent was ringed by ocean on the sunlit side, and it was consistently mild. The capitol was in the center, and it was, so he was told, too arid there to be useful for growing anything. Instead, it was the center of industry and government. The outlying edges were more humid and closer to the water sources for irrigation.

The other half of the planet, the dark half, was uninhabitable and seemed to consist mostly of rocky-looking planes of ice.

And then there was the politics. Oh dear God, the politics.

He'd always thought that if there were a contest for the government that moved the most ponderously, with a tendency towards over-analyzing things, favoring talk over action, that his home country, the good old U. S. of A. would be the hands-down winner. But things on Sundance were infinitely moreso. Without the constraints of a short lifetime to worry about, politicians here could drag an argument out for hundreds of years, without making any firm decision.

But if you wanted to boil things down, there were two major political parties here in the capitol. First, there was the Citizen's League. He supposed they would be considered the more conservative of the two; basically, they didn't want to have anything to do with Earth. When it came to space travel, they were in favor of colonizing two of the nearby planets in their own solar system, and developing tech to terraform them into supporting life, which they had made moderate progress towards accomplishing, though their goals were still a long way from being met. Earth, in their opinion, was a backwards little planet of savages, with nothing to offer.

On the other hand, you had the smaller, but more vocal Traveler's League. They seemed to exist only as a foil to the opposing party, Mark thought, and were delightfully unfocused with their rhetoric. If the Citizens opposed it, there was not much doubt that some hardy Traveler would take up in favor of it, whatever it was. So naturally, there had been a small minority of them in favor of studying Earth. Maybe even attempting to make contact again.

So, as Ian had explained it to him, when Oaiea had announced her intentions to return to Earth and study humanity, naturally, not many Travelers had approved of this plan. And the Citizens had frankly considered it treasonous. Oaiea had not been deterred, however, and still insisted that nothing else would do, but for Ian and Oaiea to pay Earth another visit. In the midst of this argument, Oaiea had simply left Ian behind.

It could have happened last week, if Mark hadn't known better, to hear Ian waxing poetic about his poor, beloved Stargazer. With Oaiea gone, and nobody willing to go chase after her, Ian had settled into life as a politician instead. He'd risen fairly high in government, possibly on the notoriety of having Oaiea as a sister, Mark wasn't sure.

So when a technological breakthrough had occurred, followed by the unveiling of the Stormbreaker-class ships, of course, it threw a wrench into their government. The Traveler's League had done the actual production of the ship, and the Citizens didn't have much use for such a fast ship. Their slower ships worked just fine for their purposes of ferrying materials and colonists back and forth to the nearby planets. Until one of them had the bright idea of using the prototype Stormbreaker to go and fetch Oaiea back to Sundance before she had a chance to foul things up with Earth, or get herself killed.

They'd argued about it, within government channels, of course, for some time. The Travelers declined to get involved; Oaiea had made her choice. And then, the small contingent of Citizens had come forward, offering to crew the ship themselves. A terrible affront to the Travelers, of course, who had held the monopoly on space travel since it had been invented. When no permission was forthcoming, the Stormbreaker crew had seized control of the ship and departed. And as it turned out, Mark had completely misinterpreted the ship's name.

Sundance didn't have storms, after all. They didn't have changing weather. The word he'd interpreted as Storm was actually closer to "Argument".

And so it had come to pass, that a Traveler-built ship with the first-ever Citizen crew, had undertaken the journey to Earth, where they'd intercepted Oaiea on her way back.

Mark had been in contact with her, sporadically, since arriving, but so far she had not volunteered her version of events of that encounter. No doubt that she would be doing so at the formal investigation that was planned.

Unlike his sister, Ian was a chatty bastard, and would cheerily sing Mark's ear off in excruciating detail about any number of topics. Ian had appointed himself Mark's new best friend, tour guide, minder, and roommate, all in one moderately-annoying package. And seeing as Ian intended to accompany Mark back to Earth to retrieve his ship, he'd figured he might as well get used to the guy.

He made his way to the kitchen area, careful to duck his head. On Earth, he was of average height, but he was head and shoulders taller than anyone on this planet. The barracks that he shared with Ian here in the capitol reminded him somewhat of a cave, or a bunker, with its dark walls and no windows. It was not, in fact, underground, although a lot of buildings here were.

"Good morning," he greeted Ian, who was ready to leave for work. Ian gave him a dubious look. Morning was a vague concept to Ian, at best.

 _You are in contact with Earth once more? I couldn't help but overhear._

Mark was somewhat taken aback. He hadn't planned on telling anyone here of that fact. He was silent for a minute, trying to think how to answer that.

Ian grinned. _You aliens do learn quickly, don't you._

"My crewmate figured it out. They were worried about me."

Ian nodded in understanding. _It would be better if the Citizen's League did not have prior knowledge of this._

"Thanks. I'd rather nobody here knew, yet, anyway."


	16. Chapter 16

**Arecibo, Puerto Rico**

Venkat was doing his best to convince President Roberts, but it was a tough sell. Congress and Appropriations were in a state of chaos. Over the past two weeks, dozens of different agencies and institutions had been vying for project approval, seeking funding for manufacturing and studying different technological advances offered by Johanssen's data hack.

The project most dear to Venkat's heart, the development and construction of a Stormbreaker-class ship, had scored some early victories, but since the information was being freely shared with other governments, it was looking more and more likely that the ship, at least the first one, would have to be an international collaboration.

The scope of the project was simply enormous, and expediting the construction was something most of the people on the planet felt pretty strongly in favor of. President Roberts was still holding out for an American-built ship with minimal international involvement, but that was looking less and less viable by the week.

The American economy simply couldn't support such a large project without increasing the development time to a soul-crushing twenty or thirty years. And it was generally accepted that China and India could likely beat America to the punch over that length of time. China had the manpower to make it happen, by their own estimations, in twelve to fifteen years. India was claiming fifteen years for theirs, as well. A European contingent was looking at twenty years, and the other three space agencies even longer.

There didn't seem to be much doubt that each agency would eventually build one of their own. The question of who would build the first one; that was the trillion-dollar question. And so the idea of an international - flagged space agency was being floated.

The concept that Earth was a single entity, at least in the eyes of an alien race, was something that people had gotten on board with relatively quickly, oddly enough. The events of the previous year had opened people's minds, to a certain degree. Seeing a rival race with technology that eclipsed their own had lit a fire under the average person that could have cared less about the Ares program ten years ago. Now, the Space Race was back on, on an impossible scale.

The United States was one of three final holdouts, but it was looking inevitable that President Roberts would soon agree to form the American branch of the international space agency. The Americans were considered to have a head start on the communications systems, and that would be their expected contribution to the first Earth-flagged ship capable of faster-than-light travel.

The flag itself had been an interesting experiment in international relations, thus far, with proposed designs being submitted and voted on by the nations of the world. The current leading design had been suggested by a group of school children from the Ukraine, and consisted of a tree, representing the planet, with a leaf for each nation.

For the mean time, however, things were still in the planning stages, and it would be many years before anything major came to fruition. They'd had sporadic communications with Watney, who was generally amenable to check in every few days, though he'd reminded Venkat that he wasn't off-world on an official NASA-sanctioned voyage this time, and therefore was within his rights to tell them all to fuck off from time to time. Sanders had been less than amused.

Perhaps it was time to get Annie Montrose involved, Kapoor decided abruptly. If anyone could get things moving, she could.

* * *

 **Capitol Barracks, Sundance**

Oaiea wasn't looking so well, Mark thought, as she tried to process everything that Mark and Ian had told her so far. When he'd gotten to the part where Earth had accessed the entire Sundance historical record and was now in the planning stages of building a starship, she'd gone from looking a little shaky to looking like she might faint.

 _My sister might need a new planet to call home, after this becomes public knowledge,_ Ian quipped. He seemed to be enjoying this. _How does Earth feel about interplanetary refugees?_ He gave a little laugh and looked at Mark.

"I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder," Mark began, realizing that particular idiom wasn't going to translate, and starting over, "I meant, that right now it might seem to Oaiea like she's personally responsible for giving Earth everything they need to make themselves technological equals with Sundance. But that's not really what's happened here."

 _How can you SAY that_ , Oaiea choked out. Her eyes had a filmy quality to them that Mark had never seen before. Tears? _I was already a traitor in the eyes of the Citizen's League. When this becomes known.._ she declined to finish her own thought, but the implications were clear. She touched her nearly-healed wrist; clearly it was a reminder to her of how her actions had been perceived by the opposing party.

Ian motioned to her to stop.

 _Mark is correct._ She looked at them both, disbelieving. _Your voyage was more successful than you realize._

* * *

 **Kennedy Space Center**

Marissa Martinez watched anxiously via video link, as once again, a spacecraft carrying her husband broke through Earth's atmosphere and skidded across the sky at thirty-six times the speed of sound. The newer re-entry crafts used a feathering method to make the journey as safe as possible, but Marissa couldn't help holding her breath and trying not to cry as the statistics for re-entry disasters filtered to the front of her mind.

It was five in the morning, and still pitch dark outside, as David snuggled his head on her shoulder, still sleepy from their early wake-up call. She was grateful for the comforting weight of him, and she held him tightly enough that she could feel both their hearts beating.

And they waited.

* * *

 **Ares 4, Descent Capsule**

"Twenty-seven thousand kilometers," Rick reported back to ground control, although the odds were good that they could not hear him anymore, as the plasma began to eat away at the heat-shielded layer of the craft.

To his left, his crew were strapped in tightly, as they began to feel the very first fingers of Earth's gravity, as it started to grab hold of the capsule. Turbulence jolted the craft, as several crew members closed their eyes.

They were in good hands. Commander Martinez had executed a flawless deceleration burn, and the crew knew this. It was still a bumpy ride. Nobody spoke, because NASA regulations called for the crew members to keep their mouths closed, tongues firmly pressed to the roof of their mouths, to avoid bite injuries. The two small windows in the craft went dark, as their reflective coatings melted away.

Rick tried to lighten the mood. "D-damn, g-g-guys... I forgot t-to bring the m-marshmallows," he joked, as he gestured to the crawling plasma. The terrified crew members gave him the side-eye and tried to smile.

Finally. The craft felt a teeth-rattling jolt at 4Gs as the first of the parachutes deployed.


End file.
